webchanges 3.31.0

Web Changes Delivered. AI-Summarized. Totally Anonymous.

webchanges anonymously checks web content (including images) and commands for changes, delivering instant notifications and AI-powered summaries to your favorite platform.

Requirements

webchanges requires .

For the best experience, use the current version of Python. We also support older Python versions for 3 years after they’re replaced by a newer one; we just ask that you use the most up-to-date bug and security fix release from that older version.

For Generative AI summaries (BETA), you need a free API Key from Google Cloud AI Studio (see here).

Installation

Install webchanges with:

pip install webchanges

Running in Docker

webchanges can easily run in a Docker container! You will find a minimal implementation (no browser) here, and one with a browser here.

Documentation

The documentation is hosted on Read the Docs.

Quick Start

Initialize

1. Run the following command to create the default config.yaml (configuration) and jobs.yaml (jobs) files and open an editor to add your jobs:

   webchanges --edit

2. Run the following command to change the default configuration, e.g. to receive change notifications (”reports”) by email and/or one of many other methods:

   webchanges --edit-config

Run

To check the sources in your jobs and report on (e.g. display or via email) any changes found from the last time the program ran, just run:

webchanges

Schedule

webchanges leverages the power of a system scheduler:

• On Linux you can use cron, with the help of a tool like crontab.guru (help here);

• On Windows you can use Windows Task Scheduler;

• On macOS you can use launchd (help here).

Code

The code, issues tracker, and discussions are hosted on GitHub.

Contributing

We welcome any contribution no matter how small, both as pull requests or issue reports.

More information for code and documentation contributors is here, and our wishlist is here.

License

See the complete licenses (released under the MIT License but redistributing modified source code, dated 30 July 2020, from urlwatch 2.21 licensed under a BSD 3-Clause License).

Compatibility with and improvements from urlwatch

This project is based on code from urlwatch 2.21 dated 30 July 2020.

You can easily upgrade to webchanges from the current version of urlwatch using the same job and configuration files (see here) and benefit from many improvements, including:

• AI-Powered Summaries: Summary of changes in plain text using generative AI, useful for long documents (e.g. legal);

• Image Change Detection: Monitor changes to images and receive notifications with an image highlighting the differences;

• Structured Data Monitoring: Track changes in JSON or XML data on an element-by-element basis;

• Improved Documentation: We’ve revamped the documentation to make implementation easier;

• Enhanced HTML Reports: HTML reports are now much clearer and include:

  • Clickable links!

  • Retention of most original formatting (bolding / headers, italics, underlining, lists with bullets (•), and indentation;

  • added and deleted lines clearly highlighted with color and strikethrough;

  • Wrapping of long lines (instead of truncation);

  • Improved compatibility with a wider range of HTML email clients, including those that override stylesheets (e.g., Gmail);

  • General legibility improvements.

• New Filtering Options: New filters, like additions_only, which allows you to focus on added content without the distraction of deletions;

• New Command Line Arguments: New command-line arguments such as --errors, which helps you identify jobs that are no longer functioning correctly;

• Increased Reliability and Stability: Testing coverage has increased by approximately 30 percentage points;

• Additional Enhancements: Numerous other additions, refinements, and bug fixes have been implemented. For more information, see here.

Example enhancements to HTML reporting: